We’ve had the opportunity to interview Mike Sullivan and Kier Darby from XenForo Limited, and ask them a few questions about their new company and upcoming forum product.
Hello Mike and Kier. Well thank-you for taking some time out of your busy day to answer a couple of questions so we can gain some insight into XenForo. We promise that we don’t want any big stories or intricacy, just a little sneak peak behind the curtain so to speak.
Mike Sullivan
XenForo Developer
Male, 26, from Glasgow, UK
Homepage: http://xenforo.com
Full Profile / @mike_sul
Kier Darby
XenForo Developer
Male, from Reading, UK
Homepage: http://kierdarby.com
Full Profile / @kierdarby
Interview by XenFans.com, Copyright (c) 2001-2010 – wetalk.network; linking to this Interview is permitted, up to 250 characters introduction fair-use allowed, copying, re-posting, translating or otherwise distributing of this article is prohibited without granted permission by xenfans.com (contact@xenfans.com)
Hello Mike and Kier. Well thank-you for taking some time out of your busy day to answer a couple of questions so we can gain some insight into XenForo. We promise that we don’t want any big stories or intricacy, just a little sneak peak behind the curtain so to speak.
- What inspired you to create a completely new forum product and get back into the forum software market, rather than jump onboard one of the numerous other products out there?
We felt that there was a place to step back and re-evaluate how forum software works. Obviously, there are things that fundamentally have to stay the same, but we’ve tried to challenge some of the standard ideas. Not all of these have worked, but a number have. We want to move fast, and the only way to do that was to have a modern, flexible core that could stand up to our lofty ideas.
- What was your favorite part of the product to code?
We each have different areas of expertise and there’s a lot of code, so it’s hard to pick favorites. Seeing the framework–both the PHP and the JavaScript–come together and support the features is very uplifting. It’s a really nice boost to see a very helpful feature be taken from start to finish in an hour. (That particular example just happened the other night!)
- How does XenForo distinguish itself from the other forum softwares already in existence? Why should developers choose the XenForo platform? Why should a hobbyist choose the XenForo platform?
From a user standpoint, we’ve put quite a bit of focus into the interface. We’ve tried to make things as intuitive and easy to use as possible. It’s important to have an application that people find fun to use. For example, if your users keep coming back to see if people have liked their messages, then that’s going to help grow your forum. Getting (and keeping!) traffic on your forum is the most important thing when creating a community.
From a developer standpoint, the framework that helps us develop quickly will help you. There’s a very flexible set of events/hooks in the code that will allow you to extend the code in ways we can’t imagine. You can attach to one event and literally change hundreds of behaviors. We also have a very rich template syntax that makes formatting the output simple.
- There has already been talk about a XenForo modification/application community. What kinds of things will you do differently from say vBulletin.org? Do you plan on offering tools to help promote professional developers sell their services (perhaps a certified directory of sorts)?
We’re very aware that third-party developers will be an important part of the ecosystem. We currently intend to keep the modification community together with the official community on XenForo.com. We (as developers) plan to provide documentation and tutorials to other developers to help them make the changes they need. There will definitely be a learning curve to developing for XenForo; it’s a big system and it approaches things differently from what people might be used to. We want to flatten that curve as much as possible.
As for paid services, we are still evaluating the best course of action for this.
- What is the one question you thought people would ask on the XenForo community, but haven’t yet (and what’s the answer)?
Honestly, the few questions we could think of have been far exceeded by the questions that would’ve never crossed our minds. It’s been great to get as much feedback as we have. It will clearly make for a better product in the end.
Mike Sullivan
XenForo Developer
Male, 26, from Glasgow, UK
Homepage: http://xenforo.com
Full Profile / @mike_sul
Kier Darby
XenForo Developer
Male, from Reading, UK
Homepage: http://kierdarby.com
Full Profile / @kierdarby
Interview by XenFans.com, Copyright (c) 2001-2010 – wetalk.network; linking to this Interview is permitted, up to 250 characters introduction fair-use allowed, copying, re-posting, translating or otherwise distributing of this article is prohibited without granted permission by xenfans.com (contact@xenfans.com)
Thank you for posting.
